Acclaimed Japanese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burning Piano on the Beach

Unlike­ly as it might seem, the Japan­ese jazz scene has for decades and decades pro­duced some of the finest play­ers in the world, from tra­di­tion­al­ists to exper­i­men­tal­ists and every­thing in-between. One might say the same about oth­er jazz-inclined coun­tries (those of north­ern Europe, for instance, hav­ing devel­oped par­tic­u­lar­ly robust scenes), but those coun­tries have to do with­out enliven­ment by “only in Japan” moments like the one we have above: jazz pianist Yōsuke Yamashita, acclaimed on both sides of the Pacif­ic, play­ing piano on the beach — a piano on fire on the beach, to be pre­cise.

This was­n’t even the first time he’d done it. In 1973, famed graph­ic design­er Kiyoshi Awazu asked Yamashita to appear in his short film burn­ing piano, play­ing the tit­u­lar instru­ment. Watch­ing it again 35 years lat­er, Yamashita wrote, “See­ing myself engaged in that extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance, I felt this wave of emo­tion that was like, ‘What was that?’

In one sense, I had per­formed as an ‘object’ in a Kiyoshi Awazu art­work. In anoth­er, how­ev­er, I had per­haps expe­ri­enced a form of artis­tic expres­sion that no one before me had ever expe­ri­enced before, as the result of a sit­u­a­tion that could only have hap­pened at that time. ‘What was that?’ There was only one way I could recon­firm this for myself—by doing it one more time.”

The oppor­tu­ni­ty arose at the behest of Kanaza­wa’s 21st Cen­tu­ry Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, who staged Burn­ing Piano 2008. You can read the even­t’s pro­gram as a PDF, which con­tains Yamashita’s reflec­tions lead­ing up to the event. It also con­tains remarks from an Awazu Design Room rep­re­sen­ta­tive who wit­nessed the orig­i­nal burn­ing piano shoot, a local piano deal­er (who assures us that long after the piano “began to appear in Japan­ese homes in the era of high-lev­el eco­nom­ic growth,” some “must be destroyed amid reluc­tant feel­ings”), and the may­or of Shi­ka Town, on whose Masuhogau­ra Beach Yamashita donned his sil­ver pro­tec­tive suit and played a funer­al requiem on the flam­ing instru­ment until it could pro­duce not a sound more.

“I did not think I was risk­ing my life,” Yamashita lat­er said, “but I was almost suf­fo­cat­ing from the smoke that was con­tin­u­ous­ly get­ting into my eyes and nose. I had decid­ed to keep on play­ing until the piano stopped mak­ing sounds, so though I did not mean it, but it end­ed up hav­ing a life-or-death bat­tle between the piano and myself.” Ded­i­cat­ed jazz play­ers know what it means to suf­fer for their art, as do all the par­tic­i­pants in the age-old inten­sive Japan­ese con­cep­tion of mas­tery, but who would have guessed that those cul­tures would inter­sect so… com­bustibly?

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CERN’s Cos­mic Piano and Jazz Pianist Jam Togeth­er at The Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Piano Jazz Album by Come­di­an H. Jon Ben­jamin — Who Can’t Play Piano

Park­ing Garage Door Does Impres­sion of Miles Davis’ Jazz Album, Bitch­es Brew

Hunter S. Thomp­son Sets His Christ­mas Tree on Fire, Near­ly Burns His House Down (1990)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.